1. Pa oject on Alternatives in
Steering Committee
P415.9
f~- ~
UDC. Ia ~John Bremer
Mario n Fanuni.
,,w ohn I . Goodiad_,
SYNOPSIS
Lynne Miller
Mary Anne Rayvnd
THE PROJL0T ON ALT R:N iTIVES IN SDUC;ATION
Vernon H Smith
~'
Charles Spe ker
Robert E . Stake
onRalph W. Tyler
A broad-gauged research/reform plan for secondary
Arthur Wirth
Director
1-11 g'1 G -'L-1 4 'O G (. F
Mary Anne Raywid
/I+ cro l u .Q d I
--f-4F% /9&1 S%441
yeducation
-- in the tradition of the famous Eight-Year Study
The Project on Alternatives in Education ( .PAZ) seeks secondary education
reform -- through detailed research that will disclose what programs work
for which students, - in relation to which educational values . Building
carefully upon what has been learned from both the successes and the
failures of earlier innovations efforts, the PAS strategy is to examine
promising programs already in operation . And the research plan is to ex.-
plore the selected proor am in dept:., fro,-r,. multiple research perspectives .
The Project seeks to answer the central question " :dhich alternatives well
serve which youngsters, in relation to which educational values?" It hy-
pothesizes that the diversity of caoices available to students, parents,
and educational staff is associated with the effectiveness of educational
experience and with client satisfaction .
The P E Research Plan
•
To employ a variety of quantitative and qualitative research techni-
ques bearing upon the central question of the inquiry, "";:hich alterna-
tives well serve which youngsters, in relation to which educational
values?"
•
To complete intensive studies of classroom teaching, learning, and cur-
riculum, by methods of observation and interviewi g, and to. carry out
comparative studies of post-secondary school education, careers, and
activities of alternative and conventional school graduates .
•
To carry out a comprehensive survey of all. LT . S . public secondary al-
ternative schools .
° To analyze the governance, organization, finance, end cost efficiency
of alternative schools as compared with conventional public secondary
schools .
•
To complete comprehensive survey of the estimated 7000 alternative
schools and programs at the secondary level - and more intensive
studies of 11,000 youngsters in approximately 100 schools .
__~'HE JOHN DEWEY SOCIETY

2. PRELIMINARY RESEARCH DESIGN
PROJECT ON ALTERNATIVES IN
Steering Committee
`Ronald S . Brandt
John Bremer
David Darland
VMario D . Fantini
4John Goodlad
William Hilton
David Imig
Lynne Miller
Executive Committee
David Darland
Lynne Miller
Mary Anne Raywid
Vernon H . Smith
Project Director
Mary Anne Raywid
Mary Anne
Vernon H.
Research Director
Herbert J . Walberg
Contributors to Draft of Research Design
Barry Anderson
Vito Perrone
David L . Clark
Mary Anne Raywid
John Herzog
Vernon H . Smith
Herbert J . Walberg
Editors of Research Design
Herbert J . Walberg and Mary Anne Raywid
The editors express gratitude to the many organizations and people contrib-
uting in various ways to this document . Special acknowledgment goes to the
National Institute of Education, the National Foundation for the Improve-
ment of' Education, the Johnson Foundation, the John Dewey Foundation, the
'~:damorphosis FoundationAssocia. .'on for Superv lion and Curriculum
Development,, and the John Dewey Society, all of which have provided
financial support .
EDUCATION
Raywid
Smith
Charles A . Speiker
Robert E. Stake
Scott Thomson
rRalph Tyler
1/Herbert J . Walberg
Arthur Wirth
14 1, L--
C y T
LO AJ ~- 7-7 /Lt-F-
6 c~~A) I S

3. • To produce a series of research and policy publications that explicitly
lay out the methodology, results, and practical implications of the re-
search .
The PAE Involvement Plan
•
To involve alternative school staff and students in all major phases of
the research effort .
To involve, over a four-year period, a coordinated team of approximately
twenty investigators, as well as drawing on the research efforts of other
investigators at institutions and agencies across the country .
• To involve participants in all the programs studied -- teachers, students,
administrators, parents -- in a national network that will exchange infor-
mation and materials, insights, visits, and requested services throughout
the life of the Project .
•
To involve a wide range of professional organizations in education in par-
ticipatory sponsorship of the venture .
•
To involve a number of government, community, business, professional and
other leaders in planning for the Project .
~~
The PAE Reform Plan
• To ascertain far more clearly than we now know, what works for different
kinds of learners -- and what kind of schooling well serves which educa-
tional values .
•
To work with and assist participant schools in the examination and refine-
ment of their own programs.
•
To legitimize effective practice on the basis of firm knowledge .
•
To produce audience-specific materials about programs -- as well as about
research findings -- so that teachers will find classroom implementation
detail ; boards and legislatures will find policy-related concerns and in-
formation ; parents will find general information ; and administrators
will find organizational data and suggestions .

4. Participants in Research Design Conference
January 28-30, 1981
Robert B . Amenta
David Darland
G . Thomas Fox, Jr .
Henry Halsted
Wayne Jennings
Sharon Johnson
Lynne Miller
Betty M.
Fritz Mulhauser
Jackson Parker
Mary Anne Raywid
John M . Sherin
Vernon H . Smith
Steven Tozer
Herbert J . Walberg
Wheeler
Participants in Design Review Conference
May 4-0, 1981
Barry Anderson
Robert D. Barr
David A . Bennett
Ronald S . Brandt
Daniel J . Burke
David L . Clark
4Robert W . Cole, Jr .
Louis A. D'Antonio
David Darland
David D. Doherty
Mario D . Fantini
Robert L . Fizzell
Thomas B . Gregory
Henry Halsted
John D . Herzog
Kerry Homstead
Bruce Howell
Wayne Jennings
Dorothy Joseph
Peter Kleinbard
Betty
1
Arnie Langberg
James H . McElhinney
Lynne Miller
Fritz Mulhauser
Joanna Nicholson
Elaine S . Packard
Jackson Parker
Mary Anne Raywid
Nancy R. Reckinger
Sally Reed
Gerald R . Smith
Vernon H . Smith
Charles A . Speiker
W. Richard Stephens
Thomas J . Synnott
Rita Thrasher
VHerbert J . Walberg
Roy A. Weaver
Betty M . Wheeler
Arthur Wirth
Jo Zander

5. CONTENTS
PAGE
Synopsis 1
Abstract 3
I . Introduction 4
Overview 4
Toward A Definition of Alternative Education 10
The Eight-Year Study and Its Relevance to P.AE 12
Purposes of the Study 13
Why is Such a Study Needed? 15
The Need for Educational Reform 16
The Difficulty in Introducing Effective Reform 17
The Promise of Educational Alternatives as a Reform Medium . . 18
The Promise of Educational Alternatives as a Reform 19
The Need for Research Into Alternative Education Practices
and Outcomes 21
What Do We Want to Find Out? Design Principles 24
Collaboration, Service, Structure and Governance 27
Collaborative Patterns of Inquiry 27
Using Studies Underway 27
Involving Those Studied in the Inquiry 28
Involving Multiple Researchers 28
Service 30
Structure and Governance 31
II . Project Activities and Plan of Work 33
Year One 34
Extensive Survey 34
Content Analysis 36
Meta-Analysis of Previous Research 37
Policy Study 38
Services 40
Year Two 42
Intensive Survey 42
School Organization, Governance and Finance 44
District-Level Organization 47
Ethnographic Investigation 49
Service 53
Year Three 55
Comparative Study 55
District-Level Organization 56
Student Follow-Up Study 57
Service 58

6. Page
Year Four 59
Conclusion 61
Appendix A : Alternative School Research Hypotheses 62
Appendix B : Hypotheses Regarding Alternative School
Governance, Organization, and Finance 67
Appendix C : Major Studies of American Secondary Education
Currently Underway 69

7. -1-
SYNOPSIS
THE PROJECT ON ALTERNATIVES IN EDUCATION
A broad-gauged research/reform plan for secondary education
- in the tradition of the famous Eight-Year Study
The Project on Alternatives in Education (PAE) seeks secondary education
reform -- through detailed = research that will disclose what programs work
for which students, in relation to which educational values . Building
carefully upon what has been learned from both the successes and the fail-
ures of earlier innovations efforts, the PAE strategy is to examine promis-
ing programs already in operation . And the research plan is to explore the
selected programs in depth, from multiple research perspectives .
The Project seeks to answer the central question "Which alternatives well
serve which youngsters, in relation to which educational values?" It hy-
pothesizes that the diversity of choices available to students, parents,
and educational staff is associated with the effectiveness of educational .
experience and with the satisfactions of all involved .
The PAE Research Plan
• To employ a variety of quantitative and qualitative research techniques
bearing upon the central question of the inquiry : "Which alternatives
well serve which youngsters, in relation to which educational values?"
• To complete intensive studies of classroom teaching, learning, and cur-
riculum, by methods of observation and interviewing ; and to carry out
comparative studies of post-secondary school education, careers, and
activities of alternative and conventional school graduates .
•
To carry out a comprehensive survey of all U.S . public secondary alter-
native schools .
• To analyze the governance, organization, finance, and cost efficiency of
alternative schools and options systems as compared with conventional
public secondary schools and systems .
To complete a comprehensive survey of the nation's estimated 7,000
alternative high schools and programs -- and more intensive studies of
11,000 youngsters in approximately 100 schools .
°
lo produce a series of i --'search aa< :. )olicy publications that explicitly
lay out the methodology, results and practical implications of the
research .

8. ABSTRACT
Ensuing pages seek to tell in detail just what the Project on Alternatives
in Education intends to accomplish, how, and why . Part I opens with a
brief statement of what alteraative schools are and how they have developed
(pages 4-10) . PAE purposes are described in pages 12-26 - with attention
to our design principles (pages 24-26), what we have borrowed from the
Eight-Year Study (pages 12-14), and our 'case' for the particular venture
we have designed : the urgent need for reform in secondary education ; the
difficulty of effecting desirable changes in schools ; the promise of alter-
native schools as reform medium and tool ; and the need for research into
alternatives (pages 15-23) . Some key features of the plan and its execu-
tion round out the background statement with attention to our blueprint for
collaboration, service, and the organization and governance of PAE (pages
27-32) .
Part II of this prospectus offers a research design with 4 year-by-year
breakdown of the several inquiries to be interwoven to yield a full, widely
credible account of alternative schools, their operations, their effects on
those most closely associated with them and on the systems of which they
are a part (pages 33-60) .

9. ThePAEInvolvement Plan
•
involve alternative school staff and studuents in all major phases of
the research effort .
• To involve, over a four-year period, a coordinated team of approximately
twenty investigators, as well as drawing on the research efforts of
other investigators at institutions and agencies across the country .
• To involve participants -in all the programs studied -- teachers,
students, administrators, parents - in a national network that will
exchange information and materials, insights, visits, and requested
services throughout the life of the Project .
•
To involve a wide range of professional organizations in education in
participatory sponsorship of the venture .
•
To involve a number of government, community, business, professional and
other leaders in planning for the Project .
The PAE Reform Plan
• To ascertain far more clearly than we now know, what works for different
kinds of learners - and what kind of schooling well serves which educa- .
tional values .
•
To work with and assist participant schools in the examination and re-
finement of their own programs .
•
To legitimize effective practice on the basis of firm knowledge .
• To produce audience-specific materials about programs -- as well as
about research findings -- so that teachers will find classroom
implementation detail ; boards and legislatures will find policy-related
concerns and information ; parents will find general information ; and
administrators will find organizational data and suggestions .
-2-

10. I
-4-
INTRODUCTION
Overview
Since more than half the workforce in our nation is devoted to the
production and distribution of knowledge, it behooves us to study the
effectiveness of the institutions chiefly responsible for imparting
knowledge, and the skills required to acquire new knowledge -- the public
schools . With respect to productivity, if education is the largest indus-
try in the United States -- involving nearly all the people at some time
during their lives and perhaps a quarter or a third at any given time --
then even small gains in effectiveness and human satisfaction can bring
about immense savings, including conservation of those precious resources,
the time and energies of both educators and students .
But in addition to basic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics
and even such higher mental abilities as understanding and critical think-
ing, Americans have long sought more from the public schools for their
children -- education toward such fundamental ideals as civic responsi-
bility, physical and mental health, vocational and career preparation,
moral and ethical conduct, and more . Are the schools achieving these
ideals today? Although the ranges of fact and opinion are wide, it seems
clear that support for public education has faltered . Increasing concerns
are voiced about its effectiveness for different kinds of children, and
divisiveness escalates about what goals the schools should try to achieve
and the best means of attaining them .
For approximately a decade now, one response to these concerns has
been the idea of providing genuinely different educations for individual
cnuic7The notion received a considerable boost with the appearance in
1974 of a new interpretive history of American education, David Tyack's The
One Best System . For despite the fact that we have long talked about
diversity as an ideal within American education, Tyack's book raised to
consciousness for many that we have also assumed that there is in education
-- prospectively if not now -- a one best way to keep school :
a single

11. best set of aims for all, a one best curriculum, a one best set of instruc-
tional methods, a one best way to organize and administer schools, and a
one best way to prepare teachers . Awareness that this was, indeed, a deep-
set operating principle opened it for the first time in the century to
serious scrutiny and challenge . The effect was to greatly extend the dis-
cussion of whether multiple educations could be a preferable arrangement
and to strengthen the legitimacy of the alternatives idea .
Meanwhile, a number of parallel efforts also dealt with the ideal of
diversity in public education . In a worldwide radio series and book,
American Education : Research and Diversity edited by Herbert Walberg for
the Voice of America (Office of the President), such thinks as Mary Jean
Bowman, Harry Broudy, Joanna Williams, George Spindler, Robert Havi~~,
John Goon dlad, Michael Kirst, and Harry Passow attempted to convey the kinds
of diversity represented and to be encouraged in our schools, as well as
the research efforts necessary to document their effects . In particular,
instructional psychologists such as Richard Snow and Lee Cronbach at
Stanford, and David Hunt at Toronto, have drawn attention to the great need
to discover the educational outcomes of different environments and forms of
instruction : on different children .
Alternative school advocates have also been quick to point out that 4#,i/d
the notion of alternative educations offering choice to students and their
families is highly consistent with the principles of a democratic society,
a pluralistic culture, the need for community involvement in education, the
need for institutional self-renewal in schools, and the need for financial
austerity . This broadly based rationale -- which appeared in the first
issue of the alternative school bulletin Changing Schools -- suggests
something of the scope of the appeal of alternatives . They seem to have a
remarkable capacity to respond to a wide spectrum of concerns .
As a result, public alternative schools have grown from a handful in
1970 to more than 10,000 today . Alternatives are found in 80% of the na-
tion's larger school districts (those enrolling 25,000 or more), and they
have begun to appear even in the smallest districts -- with one out of
every five enrolling fewer than 600 students claiming one or more alterna-
tives . An estimated 3,000,000 of the nation's youngsters are currently
enrolled in these programs .
-S-
I,

12. What are they like, these alternative schools that have proliferated
at such a rapid rate across the country? It is difficult to generalize
because what they represent is institutionalized diversity -- even, in many
cases, it would appear, very extensive uniqueness . Some alternatives con-
tinue to show clear affinity with their forebears, the Free Schools and
Freedom Schools which began outside the public system during the 60s . Many
seem marked by a casualness and informality and laid-back, low pressure
atmosphere rarely found in other schools . There is also a strong tendency
toward close ersonal re tionships instead of rules as the basis for
social organization and
Y
a charismatic basis for accepting the leadership and authority of teachers,
in preference to formal principles of role and function . The curriculum is
chosen from a wider range of knowledge and life than is the case in other
schools -- and it may be pursued in novel ways and in unusual settings .
But having said all of this, it must be added that one of the faster-
growing alternatives over the past five years has been the so-called
'fundamentalist' or 'back-to-basics' programs which contradict earlier
trends with their emphasis on formality, deference to authority, tradi-
tional curriculum, and heavy reliance on such instructional strategies as
drill, recitation, and rote . Between these extremes lies a vast range of
types of schools and programs with varying emphases, thrusts, and operating
assumptions . There are career programs and open education programs, en-
vironmental and military programs, schools for disruptive youngsters and
schools for the overly docile . As many as 300 types or variations have
been identified .
Changes in mood and tone have been noteworthy within alternative pub-
lic schools when one looks back across the full decade of their existence .
Early public school alternatives were quite likely to be one of two types .
:any of the spiritual progeny of the Free Schools were heavily concerned
with the Existential angst of all participants . There was much talk about
being free to do one's thing, without having someone else's trip laid on .
But a thrust common to many other early alternatives was the desire for
sufficient freedom from standard school procedures and requirements to get
on with a more substantial education . While programs of the first sort
-6-
control within the school . There is typically also

13. tended not to put much emphasis on cognitive learning, some remarkable
scholarship emerged from alternatives of the second variety .
The values and goals of the early alternatives were quite typically
individualistic and private -- rarely oriented toward increased group
consciousness or commonality . But programs stressing group awareness and
responsibility, and seeking quite deliberately to build a sense of com-
munity, began to appear in the mid-70s . It might be said, however, that
Greta Pruitt, who has worked extensively with alternatives in California,
finds an insufficient group orientation a continuing feature of alterna-
tives -- giving rise to the quite plausible possibility that patterns and
emphases may be regional in character .
The early emphasis on collective decision-making via participatory
democracy has become less pronounced . The fact has been greeted variously
in different quarters . One comparative study of alternative school evalua-
tions lists it as a serious common problem . On the other hand, an early,
very sympathetic analyst -- himself a director of an alternative school --
suggested that unless alternatives struck a compromise on participatory
democracy, they would probably run into trouble . His suggestion was to
limit student involvement to certain key decisions and to seek genuine
involvement in those . There have since been a number of other types of
compromise on the matter . What remained common to most of the earlier
alternatives, however, even in the absence of much collective decision-
making, is the bottom line sort of freedom and authority over one's person
that Allen Graubard urged in his Free the Children (and John Dewey had
urged some years earlier) . It is, in effect, the power of the veto : no
youngster should be forced to do what he is determined to reject ror him-
self .
One remarkably persistent feature of alternative schools of all types
is the commitment they seem to engender from all within them, students and
and staff . The devotion of the youngsters is something strange and won-
drous to behold . Incredible as it may seem, they fall all over themselves
fo (V
in their desire to testify on behalf of their school!
Because of the paucity of systematic objective research
date, sur- 4
;.)risingly little is known firmly abv :it the effecc.~ of alterii..ative schools .
-7-

14. -8-
Notwithstanding a 600-item collection of written materials about alterna-
tive schools, and a 200-page review of these as an initial phase of the PAE
research, few well documented studies of governance and finance, organiza-
tional structures and processes of alternatives, interaction patterns, and
outcomes are to be found . Case studies have been undertaken, and a large
number of evaluations, since almost all Ublic school alternatives are
required annually to document their effectiveness . These suggest that
alternative schools typically lead to increased academic achievement on the
part of their students . At least some alternatives send a substantially
higher. percentage of their graduates on to college than do comparable
schools in the same district - -- and the only inquiries to date suggest that
the alternative school graduates may out-perform the others in college .
Such results assume special significance, researchers usually point out,
given that so many alternative education students have earlier been
dropouts, delinquents, and poorl y motivated unde r-achievers . There is also
a great deal of suggestive evidence that alternatives have a positive
effect on their students' attitudes toward school -- and on their attitudes
toward themselves . Most critically, so far as success in school is con-
cerned, alternatives students seem to come to experience a heightened sense
of control over their own lives .
One of the reasons for the rapid proliferation of alternative schools
is surely the fact that so many groups, with such disparate agendas, have
seen alternatives as the means to their own purposes . Youngsters who have
hated school have looked to alternatives as the way to a much more liveable
arrangement . (In Plainview, New York, a group of high school students met
for more than a year and then presented a detailed formal proposal to the
Board of Education for the alternative they had designed .) Teachers seek-
ing a practicable way to individualize instruction in a real classroom have
looked to alternatives -- as have teachers who have felt as locked in and
restricted by conventional school procedure as have many students . And
school administrators, leaders, and policy makers have looked to alterna-
tives as a way to bring about educational reform . For some, the goal was
nothing less than the humanizing of the entire system . But the 60s had
taught much about the cFan.ge process,, showing that would-be reformers had
simply been barking up the wrong tree . They had sought substantial change

15. -9-
by modifying a single facet of the school -- curriculum or methods or
teacher deployment or scheduling arrangements . They failed to appreciate
the school's capacity to absorb and co-opt and defuse . Analysts began to
conclude that realistic hopes for improvement would have to focus on the
whale institutionalstructure -- the social organization and its culture or
climate_.__ ?Many saw in alternatives just the mechanism for introducing dif-
ferent institutional arrangements and climates . In fact, some perceived
alternatives a key to institutional renewal -- and that on a continuing
basis, since demands for a new alternative, and diminished interest in an
existing one, would be the means whereby the system could inform and then
reform itself .
A number of more specific interests have also come during the decade
to focus on alternatives, accounting in considerable part for their growth
and burgeoning popularity . Student disaffection has been evident in many
ways - including school vandalism and violence, and high truancy and drop-
out rates . From the earliest evaluations it was clear that alternatives
were an extraordinarily effective solution to these problems . Agencies
interested in delinquency and juvenile crime prevention quickly came to see
alternatives as a solution -- and even preventor -- of their problems . As
school desegregation difficulties intensified, it appeared that attractive
alternatives -- "magnet" (schools -- might draw youngsters from various
neighborhoods on a voluntary integration basis . This was, indeed, the crux
of Judge Garrity's plan for Boston . And, as public schools failed to serve
the children of some groups in ways that were adequate -- or otherwise
acceptable to the families involved -- some embraced alternatives as a
means of rendering public education more directly responsive to the differ-
ing needs of youngsters and expectations of their parents . Particularly in
the inner city where feelings of powerlessness and disenfranchisement were
widespread, policy analysts saw alternatives as a way of bestowing i-,nrre-
diate efficacy, with the chance to decide what education one's child would
pursue -- and this insight created still another set of advocates for the
options idea .
Thus, in a relatively brief period of time -- approximately a decade
alternative schools seem to have become a sigtifi.cant feature of
American public education . Their responsiveness to the cultural ideal of

16. -10-
diversity - and to the psychological needs of diverse youth for differen-
tiated educational environments and treatments -- have led many to see them
as among the brightest hopes on the educational horizon . This accounts for
the wide advocacy alternatives have enjoyed . But much remains to be known
about them, their internal dynamics, and their short and long-term effects
on the youth and adults who work within them .
Toward a Definition of Alternative Education
Given the above considerations and the maturing nature of alternative
education, it would seem that an explicit and consensually-satisfactory
definition of the term could be stated . Unfortunately the experience of
various individuals and working parties over the years reveals that such a
definition is not easily forthcoming . Indeed, one of the chief research
purposes of PAE is to provide a more comprehensive set of conceptual and
empirical descriptors . Mary Anne Raywid, in the initial phases of the PAE
research, has already written a 100-page philosophic analysis of alterna-
tive education, identifying nine essential sets of characteristics or di-
mensions, such as teaching and interpersonal relationship styles, that may
be profiled for a given alternative classroom or averaged for a school . In
addition, as part of the further work of the project, Herbert Walberg will
write a psychological analysis of the components of alternative education .
We will be confining the inquiry to secondary schools, and initially
for purposes of the comprehensive survey launching our investigation --
we will include all public schools, and programs within schools, calling
themselves alternatives . In our present and tentative working conception
of alternative education, we are disposed to assigning special weight to :
(1) the element of choice as the mode of affiliation -- for students,
parents, and staff -- marking those schools we want to study ; and (2) the
programmatic or other departure from local school practice which lends
meaning to the choice . (A choice is worth little unless one can choose
between entities marked by genuine and significant difference . So we want
to examine the nature of the differences .) Such a broad conception enables
us to examine the full ideological spectrum which alternatives reflect --

17. from basics_ and fundamentalist programs to open and free schools . It also
enables us to include schools designed for representative cross-sections of
local students, as well as schools intended for special populations (e .g .,
disruptive students, overly dependent students) . These advantages as to
conceptual breadth are accompanied, however, by distinct disadvantages,
too ; and so we will be working in two ways to refine and elaborate this
tentative definition : the Conceptualization Council described on page 31
will be tackling the definitional problem as its first task ; and we expect
the empirical inquiry eventually to help substantially in this regard by
identifying distinguishing features not now evident .

18. THE EIGHT-YEAR STUDY AND ITS RELEVANCE TO PAE
In our earliest thinking about the study projected here, allusion to
the Eight-Year Study proved a quick and easy way to communicate in broad
terms what we were thinking about -- as to general purposes, scale, and so
forth . As the plan developed, it further seemed helpful to look to the
Eight-Year Study as a springboard for developing the detailed plans for
this one . Thus, in dealing with numerous questions we have looked to the
way in which the Progressive Education Association's Study dealt with each .
In 1933, the P .E .A .'s National Commission on the Relation of School
and College launched the study which has come to be known as the Eight-Year
Study, or the Thirty Schools Inquiry (and in some alternative school liter-
ature, as the Aikin Sam) . The study began after two years of discussion
within the Commission . It sought to stimulate reform and open the way to
programmatic revision by determining the success of students and programs
freed from the confines of college entrance requirements . Several hundred
colleges agreed to accept the graduates of the thirty participant high
schools on the basis of recommendation instead of curricular requisites .
Then the Thirty Schools went to work on developing their programs, with the
help of the Study staff . In 1936, after three years of program development
and trial, the evaluation phase of the project began, with the entrance in-
to college of the first class of students involved in the inquiry . Ulti-
mately, 1475 youngsters in the experimental schools were carefully matched
with the same number in control schools . The Study ended in 1941 .
Succeeding pages offer further details about the Eight-Year Study as
these pertain to specific questions . These have aided our planning but not
bound us . We have designed a contemporary parallel to the P .E .A . inquiry,
not a replication . The advantages in thinking in these terms have in-
cluded the accomplishment of the earlier Study, the respect it continues to
command, plus its image as having made the empirical case for reform .
PEA
y9J

19. -1 3 -
PURPOSES OF THE STUDY
The purposes of the Eight-Year Study, as gathered from several volumes of
its report, were :
1 . To see what would happen to high school programs when freed from the
restrictions of college entrance requirements .
2 . To see what would happen to high school students when freed from the
restrictions of college entrance requirements .
3 . To see whether traditional entrance requirements and examinations made
any difference to success in college .
4 . "To establish a relationship between school and college that would . . .
encourage reconstruction in the secondary schools ."
5 . "To find, through exploration and experimentation, how the high school
in the United States can serve youth more effectively ."
6 . " . . .to develop new programs which would be better for young people, for
success in college, for success in life, and for the future of our
society . . ."
Some additional guiding concerns (or evolving purposes) and accomplishments
(or purposes served) were :
7 . To develop programs in accord with the principle that "the general life
of the school . . . should conform to what is now known about the ways in
which human beings learn and grow ."
8 . To develop programs in accord with the principle that "the high school
in the United States should re-discover its chief reason for
existence ." ("Perhaps the most fruitful experience of the Thirty
Schools in the early stages of the Study was that of thinking through
and stating plainly the results they hoped to achieve .")
9 . "The investigation . . . identified certain principles upon which the more
effective curricula were built, and developed many evaluation
instruments by which some of the more intangible results of education
may be appraised ."
10 . The study developed the summer workshop to facilitate curriculum
revision via "opportunity for groups of teachers to work on their
problems . . . with the aid of a selected staff and the facilities of a
large university ."

20. -1 4 -
11 . "demonstrated the value to teacher motivation and morale of partici-
pating in educational experimentation . . ."
12 . " . . .led to a series of similar projects among groups of secondary
schools throughout the country ."
13 . " . . .led dozens of dedicated teachers who took part in this kind of
-
process to go on to make important contributions to American W ' 4,D
education ."
14 . " . . .the establishment of a new method of working, a new style of
participation . . . and the recruitment of many academics who might
otherwise have remained in their ivory towers . . . . the enlistment of
relevant professional organizations, the simultaneous encouragement
of research and . . . the training of teachers who could use that
research . . ."
15 . The simulation and nurture of "the advance guard of a movement or of a
development in a discipline, those who lived on the growing_ edge of
change Their series of projects . . . took many forms :
a massive
inauguration and 2Sudy f new programs in thirty schools . . . the Hanover
Seminar on Human Relations in the summer _f 1934 charged with
developin an outline all that was known about human behavior ;astu y o p ysica growth o adolescents ; systematic attempts to
develop curricula that would teach adolescents whose needs had been
freshly explored, and production of books that wo d embody these
insights and materials ." (The author of the statement, Margaret Mead,
identified fourteen volumes growing out of these efforts .)
16 . "The processes of the Eight-Year Study may be even more significant
than its products, valuable as they were, and are . Those processes
had the effect of making teachers more receptive to help from outside
the schools, more critical of their own and each others' work, more
concerned with the growth of students in their uniqueness as separate
individuals, and more conscious of the direct relationship between
education and the social order ."......
Purposes of the PAE study, as these have emerged to date, are :
1 . To identify, within alternative schools, what appear to be effective
practices in realizing specific values with different students .
2 . To identify the kinds of educational, organizational, and administra-
tive contexts which conduce to productive and satisfying school
experience for all concerned .
3 . To help participating schools and districts to explore and refine
their practice .
4 . To conduct the project, and to disseminate its findings and conclu-
sions, in such fashion as to enable it to have maximal effects upon
public decision-making regarding school practices and arrangements .
5 . To conduct the project, - ;d to disseminate its findings and conclu-
sions in such fashion as to provide maximal assistance to educators
wishing to establish similar programs .

21. - 1 5-
WHY IS SUCH A STUDY NEEDED?
The need for the Eight-Year Study is summarized in the opening pages
of its 1941 report, in a list of assertions about the state of secondary
education as of the early Thirties . Some of the claims seem hauntingly
familiar :
"Secondary education in the United States did not have clear-cut,
definite, central purposes .
Schools failed to give students a sincere appreciation of their
heritage as American citizens .
Our secondary schools did not prepare adequately for the rannsi-
Olirios of, community life .
The high school seldom challenged the student of first-rate ability
to work up to the level of his intellectual powers .
Schools neither knew their students well nor guided them wisely .
Schools failed to create conditions necessary for effective learning .
The creative energies of students were seldom released and developed .
The conventional high school curriculum was far removed from the real
concerns of-you
The traditional subjects of the curriculum had lost most of their
vitality and significance .
Most high school students were not competent in the use of the English
language .
There was little unity nor continuity in the typical high school
program .
The high school diploma meant only that the student had done whatever
was necessary to accumulate the required number of units ."
Five sets of reasons suggest the need for the projected PAE
They are : (1) the need for educational reform ; (2) the difficulty in
introducing effective reform ; (3) the promise of educational alternatives
as an effective renewal mechanism ; (4) the promise of alternatives as an
ad uc;7 ta.rr? '
reform ;
education practices and outcomes .
study .
(5) the need for r= earth into ~>U_ernative

22. -1 6-
The Need for Educational Reform
• According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, "It is
clear that neither 13-year-olds nor 17-year-olds receive a great deal of
direct instruction in writing or are required to do much writing in
school ." As one editor summed it up, "Good writing became a little
harder to find in American high schools during the 1970s ."
• Average scores on the College Entrance Examination Board's Scholastic
Aptitude Test continue their steady 13-year slide . Since 1967, the
average verbal score has dropped 42 points and the math score 26 .
• The school's efforts to accommodate all youngsters are simply not suc-
ceeding . The evidence lies not only in low achievement levels, but in
national dropout figures . A 1978 investigation predicted that three-
quarters of a million of the youngsters then in New York State schools
would drop out prior to graduating . The investigators urged that we
view it a pushout problem, not a dropout phenomenon .
• Students vent their rage at schools in vandalism rates that are stagger-
ing . NEA figures cited. a $600 million toll for vandalized school prop-
erty in 1975 - a year when Chicago and New York City schools alone
spent $13 million on security measures . A recent Gallup Poll showed
that one-fifth of the nation's teenagers fear for their own safety while
in school . And according to the NEA, almost 60,000 teachers were as-
saulted in 1978, with more than double that number subjected to mali-
cious property damage .
•
In 1964, 25% of the school bond issues put to American voters failed ; by
1974 the rejection rate had more than doubled, standing at 54% .
• Proposition 13 now seems only the beginning . Like legislation is in
effect or pending in approximately 20 states . And in Massachusetts,
Proposition 2 1/2 - passed without benefit of the state surplus which
deferred full effects on California schools -- may lead to the
shutting down of entire school districts .
• The annual Gallup Polls on education have disclosed steadily declining
overall public ratings for schools over the last seven years (with the
sole exception of a single percentage point gain in 1980) . As of 1974,
almost half the public (48%) assigned public schools a grade of A or B .
As of 1980, only a third (351) were willing to do so . Almost half (47%)
assigned grades of C, D, or F this year -- reflecting mild to strong
dissatisfaction .
• A group committed to "increasing citizen participation in the affairs of
the nation's schools" -- on grounds that "For too long, school decisions
have been made primarily by professionals, and usually in private,
removed from public view" _,._ claims to represent 225,000 pee le,
including 335 affiliate groups, as well as individuals .

23. - 1 7 -
° A number of parents are expressing their dissatisfaction with public
schools by removing their children . Although public school enrollments
dropped by about 5 million between 1970 and 1978, non-public schools
have increased by 1% or more each year since 1975 . Estimates suggest
that enrollment in Christian schools increased by 118% from 1971 to
1975 . And the flight to the suburbs phenomenon shows clearly in the
racial figures of city schools : Washington, D .C ., public schools are 94%
Black, 2% Hispanic, only 4% white .
° Ex-Commissioner of Education Ernest Boyer has warned, "If the schools
especially the high schools - don't make dramatic reforms in the 1980s,
the public school will become more and more rejected . It will lose con-
stituency support . And . . . [in that event] . . . there will be more aliena-
tion among young people, parents and the public than we have ever seen
in this country -- with disastrous consequences . We will be losing an
essential resource at the very time it is needed most ."
The Difficul v in Introducing Effective Reform
Public education expenditures rose by 250% during the 60s . Between 1964
and 1974 the U .S . Office of Education spent more than $200 million on
educational research, and foundations spent millions more on develop-
ment . The returns were disappointing at best . As Paul Nachtigal con-
cluded after examining the Ford Foundation's grants to schools, "I'm not
sure we have any real clues at the present time on how to reform tae
educational system ."
-- A number of the innovations introduced during the optimistic 60s did not
outlive the extraordinary funding intended just to facilitate start-up .
Others fared even less well, with some apparently not implemented at
all, and others pursued on such a _pro forma basis as to be judged
"co-opted ."
As Harry Gracey established, "the structural forces at work in the
school system overwhelm the attempts of . educators" to implement ideas
lying outside the limited range congruent with the underlying bureau-
cratic structure of the school . Eventually such innovators either leave
the organization, redefine their goals, or so absorb themselves in daily
urgencies as to abandon the innovative hopes .
Efforts at involving parents and other community members in try control
of their schools have not to date met with much success . According to
~.fg
Miriam Clasby, advisory councils, for instance, "remain at the periphery
~/
of school policy and practice ."
Efforts at decentralizing curricular control have failed to date to
actually shift much decision-making authority, according to Gordon
Cawelti .

24. - 1 8-
-- As Seymour Sarason has suggested, a school is a complicated social
system with a subculture of its own -- and those who would introduce
change - into a school must first have some understanding of that particu-
lar system and the content of its culture if their efforts are to be
successful .
-- According to the Rand study, the attempt to reform schools from the top
down simply does not work .
The Promise of Educational Alternatives As A Reform Medium
• Alternative schools have a greater chance of success than many other
reform efforts since neither the initiation nor survival of any single
program must depend upon 4istric_ t-wide maiority support . Keeping these
schools as options requires only that they well serve and maintain the
backing of one segment of the school population and public . Hence,
triumph on the scale required of earlier reform efforts is not necessary
to the success and durability of these programs .
• Alternative schools already appear a going end growing phenomenon . The
number and variety of such programs already established in the past
twelve years recommends them as a reform hope that need not look to an
intervention strategy and the introduction and support of change agents .
These programs don't have to be initiated ; they are already in existence
-- and in many cases, thriving .
• Alternative schools may have greater hope of success than other reform
efforts since these schools represent new entities rather than attempts
to modify old ones -- and, as Seymour Sarason has suggested, it seems
easier to create a new social organization than to change an existing
one .
• Alternative schools supply the conditions many analysts have indepen-
dently found necessary to school reform of any sort . These include :
they are likely to be relatively small, with few exceeding 200 students .
They are likely to enjoy greater autonomy than other schools and pro-
grams within the same district . And they are likely to have been chosen
by their teachers and other staff, as well as by their students .
• Alternatives independently place a premium on the features critical to
significant sustained reform . According to Milbrey McLaughlin, these
features are : extensive, continuing interaction among participants,,' and
shaping and adaptation of the effort by those who are to implement it .
(The successful change process appears very much a matter of reinventing
the wheel -- with the "reinventing" every bit as important as the
"wheel"!) Alternative schools, with their stress on 'home-grown' pro-
grams, and on interpersonal interaction and process, seem to emphasize
the ideal conditions .

25. - 1 9-
• Alternative schools may supply the means not only for irttrod ucina
change, but for institute n and thereby keeping it happening .
Since new alternatives can beest afieisheas nedsandinterests war-
rant, and existing ones can close as interest wanes, these organiza-
tional units constitute a mechanism enabling schools to become
self-renewing systems .
• Alternatives have provided ideal contexts for effectively operationaliz-
ing significant proposals originating outside them -- e .g ., James
Coleman's concept of the information-rich, action-poor society ; the
National Commission on Resources for Youth's insistence that young
people be allowed to participate in productive activities and assume
real responsibilities ; and the idea that learners have significantly
different ie.arnin. styles that might be matched to mutual advantage with
the similarly differen"' tiated teaching styles of their teachers .
• Alternatives proved responsive to the themes which dominated public
policy for the 70s : the pluralism and subcultural identification that
were nurtured, the commitment to equality, the right to a voice in the
decisions by which one must live . But they seem equally responsive to
the policy themes emerging for the 80s -- e .g ., the right of families to
choose an education, the return to increased local control of education,
and particularly the restoration of greater autonomy to individual
schools, decentralization and de-bureaucratization .
• Educational alternatives have been recommended by a growing list of
national committees and commissions -- virtually every one charged in
the past . decade with examining the state of secondary education and how
to improve it . Endorsers now include the 1970 White House Conference on
Children, the 1974 Panel on Youth of the President's Science Advisory
Committee, the Office of Education's Panel on High Schools and Adoles-
cent Education, the Phi Delta Kappa Task Force on Compulsory Education
and Transition for Youth, the Council for Educational Development and
Research, the Kettering Foundation's National Commission on the Reform
of Secondary Education, the Carnea Commission on Higher Education,
and the National Advisory Council on the Education of Disadvantaged
Children .
• Alternatives have also been recommended by agencies seeking to resolve
problems that are not primarily educational -- e .g ., by federal courts
seeking to desegregate public schools, and by the Senate's Subcommittee
on Juvenile Delinquency concerned about youthful offenders .
The Promise of Educational Alternatives As A Reform
What is it that makes alternative education desirable? Here are the
points most o tLen cited :

26. -20-
Diverse educational arrangements (programs, methods, teachers) are
necessary to provide adequately for the array of interests, needs, and
abilities of American youngsters .
-- We are a people with diverse worldviews, life styles, and value systems
-- calling for very different educational structures and practices, as
well as aims and content .
-- The opportunity to choose something as significant as one's education --
among options that are genuine -- is fundamental to the freedom of
choice to which democracy is committed .
-- Youngsters have learning styles that differ sufficiently as to make it
unlikely that a single type of school program can optimally accommodate
all .
-- Teachers have teaching styles that differ sufficiently as to make it
unlikely that a single type of school program can optimally benefit from
all .
-- To gain in providing for each individual the education best suited for
him or her is a social gain, no less than an individual benefit .
Perhaps among the most educative of all activities in which an indi-
vidual can participate is the development of his/her own education .
What marks alternative education as a going and successful phenomenon?
Although much of the existing evidence must be viewed as limited or
tentative, here is what that evidence suggests to date :
Alternatives experience such remarkable success with disruptive student
behavior as to prompt researcher David Mann to ask at the conclusion of
his study, whether the initial problem had been "Disruptive Students or
Provocative Schools?"
• Alternative schools seem to foster self-esteem, feelings of personal
potency, self-reliance, and a sense of fate control -- all of which
appear to be closely associated with academic success as well as with
positive social behavior .
• Vandalism is sharply lower in alternative schools than in other schools
within the same district, and violence is almost totally absent .
Optional alternative schools were the most frequent recommendation pro-
posed to the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency for tackling
school crime .
• Most alternative high schools send a markedly higher percentage of their
graduates on to college than do comparable schools within the same dis-
trict .
Alternatives need be no more costly than conventional programs . Most
public school alternative programs "operate on the same per pupil budget

27. -2 1 -
as conventional schools at the same level in the same community," ac-
cording to a survey made at the University of Indiana .
• There are now 10,000 alternative schools in the United States, located
in 5,000 school districts . Two-thirds of the nation's largest school
systems currently offer alternative educational programs, and a number
of them have placed their entire educational offerings on an alterna-
tives-options basis .
• The evidence shows remarkable declines in truancy and dropout rates in
alternative schools -- despite the fact that many of the students in
some alternatives are disaffected youth and previous dropouts . As the
Ford Foundation reported, "Attendance rates almost without exception
exceed those in regular schools ."
• In alternative schools where remedial work is stressed, previously weak
students experience consistent academic gains . This has been the case
in Grand Rapids' several alternative programs ; it has been dramatically
evident at Harlem Prep, which sends a reported 95% of its graduates on
to college .
• Evaluations which have sought and compared parent reactions suggest that
parental approval, support, and appreciation for alternative schools are
consistently higher than for conventional school programs .
•
Students in alternative schools display consistently more positive atti-
tudes toward their teachers, their schools, and education in general
than do their counterparts in conventional schools .
• There is growing evidence that alternatives yield more satisfaction for
teachers, as well as for students and their parents . In fact, suggests
Daniel Duke, looking to alternative schools "may help those who want to
reverse declining teacher job satisfaction, morale, and productivity ."
• Analyses of studies and evaluations completed to date lend support to
the conclusion that the cognitive achievement of alternative school stu-
dents equals or exceeds local district norms . "In short," concludes one
such analysis, "one could be assured that most students would achieve at
least as well, if not better, than in the comprehensive school system
available to them ."
The Need for Research Into Alternative Education Practices and Outcomes
• It is certainly the case, as Art Wirth has pointed out, that "advocates
of alternatives can-find elements in the current situation which vin-
dicate t e'.r contentions . The truth is, however, that we have created
no large scale effort to evaluate alternatives vis a vis conventional
schools . . . Nor do we have systematic compare,,'_-:. r studie of different
kinds of alternatives .

28. -2 2-
• The numerous studies of alternative schools carried out to date have re-
mained minimally helpful in gaining additional professional and public
support . For practical reasons as well as reasons of principle, many of
the evaluative studies have been formative rather than summative in
nature, and have not been designed to inform and convince outsiders of
the merits of the program.
• One of the reasons that conclusive findings about success have not
emerged from the alternatives studies to date may be that we lack
adequate measures for assessing short-term growth and benefits .
• As Terrence Deal and Robert Nolan have noted, "Although alternative
schools are having and will continue to have a marked impact on the
field of education, we actually know little about them . There is a
voluminous . . . literature which either extols the virtues or denigrates
the basic character of alternative schools . But there simply is not
much . . . which approaches these new institutions theoretically, describes
them empirically, or provides operational guidelines based on thoughtful
analysis or case studies ."
• According to Daniel Duke, "the literature on alternative schools in-
cludes few systematic studies of their objectives or programmatic
features . . . . [The] archival value . . . [of the studies available] . . .out-
weighs their usefulness as input for decision making ."
• An article in Integrated Education severely criticized the lack of re-
search into one city's program . In "Alternative Schools : A Network of
Unknowns," the author was concerned that the schools were "without any
controlled research data on how well children in the alternative program
learn in comparison with similar children in neighborhood schools . . . .
Most assessments of the program, both pro and con, come from personal
observations ."
• Daniel Duke and Irene Muzio found a number of shortcomings in alterna-
tive school evaluations, which remain the major source of claims about
alternative education . In the nineteen evaluations they reviewed, the
weaknesses shared include a lack of comparison data, poor recordkeeping,
a failure to randomize when sampling, a lack of data on per pupil costs,
and a lack of follow-up data on graduates and dropouts .
• There are currently at least four major studies of secondary education
underway . (See Appendix C, pages 69-70 .) None, however, will yield
knowledge about what programs work for which youngsters and in relation
to which values . And none seems committed to pursuing the policy impact
purposes of the Project on Alternatives in Education . Although the
Coleman Study includes youngsters from 30 alternative schools, it will
involve no effort to ascertain the kinds of organizational arrangements
and practices which appear important to explaining alternative school
outcomes . The other three studies seem to focus largely on curriculum
-- which some alternatives hold a lot less critical than other features
of a school 's program. Thus, it wou_` d appear that neither the
particular knowledge-seeking nor the polic : ., impact purposes of PAE are
likely to be duplicated by other current efforts .

29. -23 -
* * * * * * * * * * * ~ * ~ ~ * * ~ * ~ ~ * ~ ~ ~ * ~
ByBy way of summary, it is, then, the need for educational reform, which
when coupled with the difficulty of implementing and sustaining genuine re-
form, lends this project great urgency . Educational alternatives offer
unusual promise as a reform medium and mechanism . There are also signifi-
cant indications of their success in their own right . But careful, sys-
tematic study remains important to confirming and clarifying the presump-
tive evidence . It is also essential to enabling us to claim with any
confidence what educational programs are likely to prove successful for
which youngsters and in relation to which educational values -- since this
particular question has received virtually no attention in alternative
school inquiries .

30. -2 4-
WHAT DO WE WANT TO FIND OUT? DESIGN PRINCIPLES
The Eight-Year Study's procedure consisted of helping participant
schools articulate their objectives, and then devising evaluation measures
to discern how well individual students had succeeded at these goals . The
objectives stated were :
1 . The development of effective methods of hi
g
2 . The cultivation of useful work habits and study skills
3 . The inculcation of soci
attitudes
4 . The acquisition of a wide range of significant interests
5 . The development of increased appreciation of music, art,
literature, and other esthetic experiences
6 . The development of social sensitivity
7 . The development of better personal-social adiustment
8 . The acquisition of importaln't information
The development of physical health
10
The development of a consistent philosophy of life
Student progress and achievement of the sort the Eight--Year Study
measured is important . We still want to know what kinds of educational
programs conduce to maximal academic achievement in various fields of
learning, mature and sophisticated habits of mind, social concern, artistic
appreciation, mature interaction with others - and the PAE study will seek
to answer these questions . It is also important to the potential use and
impact of the `projected study that we produce comparative data on them,
showing the success of alternative school students in relation to that of
students in conventional schools . Public confidence in education is such
-- and current educational emphases are such -- that this sort of informa-
tion may well be of paramount concern to a number of educational policy-
makers in this country . Thus, our inquiry cannot aid very substantially in
the expansion of alternative education without producing this kind of data .
Since the most meaningful sorts of comparisons often examine an individ-
ual's accomplishment in relation to his or her previous achievement, this
sort of measure will be stressed ; but it will be impossible to avoid
comparison groups without foregoing the information. many decision-makers
went most .
We are aware, however, of the reservations of many alternative schools
to the usual kinds of evaluations, and we are much in sympathy with their

31. - 25-
hesitations -- e .g ., about undergoing assessments in relation to goals not
their own, while their own goals are ignored ; and about being pitted, in
effect, against other programs, and often in ways yielding systematic bias
against them . We will respond to these concerns by attempting to avoid
the kinds of biases and distortions that have accrued as research instru-
ments and strategies designed for others' purposes are used as sole
measures of alternatives' success ; and we shall seek to devise ways to en-
able the newer programs to document accomplishment in relation to their own
values . One thing that will help in several of these connections is the
fundamental premise of the PAE inquiry : We do not assume that any educa-
good many things
search strategies
in addition to
in supplement
tional program is good for all youngsters, or that any can respond to all
educational values . Thus, our attempt is not so much to assign marks to
programs as to determine which students they seem to benefit and which
values they appear to serve .
These several concerns mean that the PAE study will be looking at a
w
achievement outcomes, and employing re-
to traditional comparative techniques .
There is much to be learned in construing educational goals in other terms
than destinations to be reached or products to be made . As John Bremer
suggests, perhaps an education like a symphony, is better judged in the
immediate experience it provides than on the basis of what might be said
after the last bar has been played . Whether or not one is prepared to
accept so novel a view, it is surely the case that a meaningful assessment
of an education cannot be limited to destinations reached or products
yielded . As Michael Scriven has reasoned, it might make sense to evaluate
an education on the basis of outcomes alone if it could be accomplished in
a matter of a single minute . But since an education is instead a matter of
years, there are a good many other things we want to require of it in addi-
tion to outcome quantity and quality . Thus, a good assessment will tell us
also of the nature and quality of the school experience, the structures and
arrangements which yield it, its unintended consequences as well as its in-
tended ones, its effects in relation to values and objectives not its own,
and the way it is experienced by those associated with it -- teachers and
pare - :.s as well as students .
ho
1)
tess/
9Hv.#}

32. J
-26-
This calls not only for extensive investigation, but for inquiry of
multiple types . We will thus be engaged in standard sorts of quantitative
impact studies approaching a quasi-experimental design . But we shall also
be pursuing inquiry in the person-environment interaction mode . And our
inquiry question recommends the use of the recently evolved 'effective
schools' pro h. Moreover, we shall be employing organizational analysis
measures, ocument and demographic analysis, and ethnographic studies, as
well as seeking indications of satisfaction and of achievement .
These multiple types and targets of investigation are recommended not
only by the breadth of our inquiry question, but also by the fact that dif-
ferent audiences are interested in different types of information arrived
at and warranted in different ways .

33. -2 7 -
COLLABORATION, SERVICE, STRUCTURE AND GOVEKNANCE
Collaborative Patterns of Inquiry
PAE's commitment to reform purposes means that it must have positive
impact and make a genuine difference . This, in turn, calls for generating
a considerable amount of reliable knowledge we now lack . And it also calls
for knowledge which prospective users will accept as psychologically
credible and meaningful to themselves .
These two sets of needs -- for reliable new knowledge, and for
meaningful knowledge -- combine to recommend a great deal of participation
and collaboration, including collaborative inquiry . (There are also a
number of other reasons, of course, why collaborative inquiry is desirable,
but the practical argument would alone seem compelling, given our
purposes .) There are at least three forms which such collaboration will
take . The first type will involve making systematic use of studies already
underway . A second type will involve those being studied in the inquiry
process . We will, that is, make the objects of our inquiry in some sense
the subjects of it too . A third type of collaboration will involve a
number of researchers in doing the inquiry .
Using Studies Underway
We will establish a research network with major research efforts in
alternative education already underway . Formal arrangements will be
reached with such researchers, to such diverse effects as : gaining early
access to their data and performing our own analyses of it ; offering
support and/or dissemination advantages to such researchers ; convincing
such researchers to modify or augment their designs and/or data somewhat to
meet PAE interests (depending on the stage of the inquiry in question) .
There are currently four major studies of American secondary education
underway and in various stages . Each one has ramifications for alternative
c .'ucation, some are very directly concerned with it . PAE has been in touch

34. -2 8-
with the directors of each of these studies and all would appear receptive
to mutually advantageous arrangements, including the provision of early
access to- data . This will enable us to incorporate relevant findings as
they emerge, and these may in turn also be suggestive of emerging hypoth-
eses for our consideration . The four studies are James Coleman's "High
School and Beyond" study of the effects of secondary education on the grad-
uates of 1116 high schools ; the "Excellence in Education" study of the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Education ; the National Academy
of Education's study of the value assumptions underlying secondary educa-
tion ; and the study heralded as the new Conant report, co-sponsored by the
National Association of Secondary School Principals and the National
Association of Independent Schools, and directed by Ted Sizes . (See
Appendix C, pages 69-70, for a brief description of each of these
studies .)
Involving Those Studied in the Inquiry
Our plans call for involving alternative school people directly in the
inquiry process . Staff, students, and parents associated with the schools
being studied will be involved in important ways with several parts of the
inquiry . Staff will be involved in the ethnographic study of other
alternatives as process observers and as document reviewers and analysts .
Students and parents will be sought to aid in the collection of demographic
data and documentary materials . They will also aid in the review of
activities of parallel groups at other schools -- i .e ., students will
review student activities at other schools, parents will review the modes
of parent and community involvement at other schools . All three groups
will be asked to participate in the taking of the oral histories and
anecdotal accounts to be a part of project records and the repository to be
described later in this document .
Involving Multiple Researchers
The Steering Committee has spoken of the PAE study as consisting of a
"congeries" of inquiries or representing a "confederation" of studies

35. rather than a single one . This kind of characterization follows from our
multiple methods, 'saturation' study notion . But we will also represent
associated inquiries in other ways as well . Here are several ways in which
they have been planned .
Several major thrusts have been identified for the project, and these
will be carried out separately, although in coordination . One team of re-
searchers will examine governance, and organizational and financial dimen-
sions of alternative education at the individual school or program level .
Another will be exploring these concerns at the district or system level .
At least two separate teams will be pursuing qualitative inquiry, one
including ethnographic investigation of the classrooms of alternative
schools, and another doing a phenomenologically-oriented follow-up study of
alternative school graduates, including their perceptions of and attitudes
toward their former schools .
The Project Director will be responsible for coordinating the project
and for maintaining liaison and service activities with school staff and
students . She will also be responsible for content analyses of alternative
school documentary materials and for further accumulating materials such as
computer tapes, student project materials, and oral histories to contribute
to a national repository of quantitative and qualitative materials to be
located in a university library or other agency .
The PAE Research Director will direct the inquiry and serve as prin-
cipal quantitative investigator in the areas of measurement, evaluation,
and statistical analysis with a primary substantive focus on the psycho-
logical effects of alternative education on outcomes for different young-
sters . As Research Director, he will assist the Project Director in the
design, analysis, and interpretation of the large-scale national survey
scheduled for the first year of the project .
This model of collaborative, cross-disciplinary inquiry to attack
massive and complex educational questions has worked efficiently in other
areas of educational research inquiry . Walberg, for example, is presently
completing a large study for the National Science Foundation in which the
University of Illinois in Chicago, as prime 0rantee, is conducting_psy
logical s~_,•.lies f sc_--1-.nce education at elementary and junior and senior
Under sub-contracts, a sociologist at the Universityhigh school levels .
-2 9 -

36. -3 0-
of Minnes.ora is analyzing mathemati cs edur
on, a political scientist at~
Northern Illinois University is analyzing social studies .
The Education
r
Commission of the States is supplying massive amounts of machine-readable
data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress . A dozen policy
papers have been produced by senior and junior members of these teams .
Fifteen research workers from seven other universities have been trained to
use the data, and have already launched a second generation of research
inquiry .
Walberg is also currently serving as a team member along with Sarah
Lawrence Lightfoot, a Harvard sociologist and psychoanalyst, in a project
on school and home relations in ten ethnic groups . The inquiry is led by a
former high school teacher and an anthropologist with several years of ex-
perience in Africa working with Beatrice and John Whiting . Such cross-
disciplinary efforts are just the sort essential for the present project .
Service
The provision of services and assistance to participant schools will
be an important dimension of PAE . It will be important to participants'
desire to be a part of the study - and to remain sufficiently committed to
it to render our knowledge-seeking efforts successful . Moreover, aiding
these programs in improving their practice falls squarely within the pro-
ject's reform intent . And the Humanist ethos of many alternatives yields a
separate reason why service to participant schools is important . That
ethos holds that no individuals or groups should ever be used merely as
means to others' purposes . It follows that if we want these programs to
allow us to study them, we must be prepared to offer something in return .
But there are other reasons also why services to schools participating
in the PAE study might well receive our attention . Ralph Tyler feels that
one of the significant achievements of the Eight-Year Study was its inven-
tion of the summer workshop for teachers . PAE may likewise pioneer new
modes of interaction for giving and receiving help . It would surely fall
well within our purposes to do so .
Finally, the PAE office now has a wealth of material on alternative
education -- including periodicals (most of them hard to find, some out of

37. - 3 1 -
print entirely), analyses, studies, research reports, books, articles,
program descriptions and evaluations, and numerous other 'fugitive docu-
ments .' Given overall purposes, it would be to our advantage, that of
participant schools, and perhaps other schools as well to make these
materials available to interested people .
With such multiple concerns as these in mind, what kinds of services
and assistance should PAE offer participant schools? This and other ques-
tions are answered in Part II, which specifies the research and service
activities for each of the four years of the project .
Structure and Governance
Preceding pages have told nothing of the Project's structure and the
way it will be organized to carry out the tasks which we find warranted by
the foregoing, and which subsequent pages will detail . The needs we have
described call for innovative structural and operational features as well
as creative plans to be carried out . Here, then, is an account of how the
work of the Project shall be organized and coordinated .
Overseeing the work of the Research and Project Directors, and making
policy for the entire venture, will be the PAE Steering Committee . The
original 10-member body has now been expanded to include the Research
Director and representatives of each of PAE's participant sponsor organiza-
tions . An Executive Committee of three represents the Steering Committee
in advising its fourth member, the Project Director . The Committee is
nominated by the Project Director from among the members of the Steering
Committee and is confirmed by that body for three-year terms .
Three other bcdies have been planned to date : a Conceptualization
Council, an Advisory Council, and a Research Advisory Board . The Con-
ceptualization Council is to be organized and begin functioning im-
mediately . Its purpose will be to assist with the theoretic and conceptual
problems attending the Project's work by generating, and soliciting
critique on, relevant materials . For example, the Council's first task
will be tackling the question of a conception of educational alternatives .
It -rill also explore explanatory theories which can be brought to bear on
the inquiry .

38. -3 2 -
An Advisory Council will be named, consisting of representatives of
non-educator groups, as well as of the relevant educational constituencies
-- teachers, administrators, teacher educators, and scholar-researchers .
This body will recommend and react to plans for Project activities and
functions . It will try to reflect at the national level the kind of broad
community involvement for which alternatives have stood at the local
level .
Finally, a Research Advisory Board will be established as we approach
identification of schools for site study . This group will include one per-
son from each of the schools where the ethnographic inquiry is to be
carried out . Its purpose is twofold : to provide input on the part of par-
ticipant schools into design and Project extension and reformulation ; and
to contribute to the interchange among participant schools that is very
much a part of overall PAE purposes .
The deliberate involvement of investigators located in a number of
institutions, rather than centrally, introduces the need for distinct con-
trol arrangements . Contracts will be drawn up for each major part of the
total inquiry . These contracts will be subject to renewal once a year on
approval of the Project Director and the Research Director, with the con-
currence of the Steering Committee . These contracts will be specific with
respect to time allocations of investigators and support staff, work plan,
scheduling, scope of activities to be conducted, and deliverables . De-
tailed accounting of total and sub-contract expenditures and activities
will be submitted to the funding agency as required . The Director and
Research Director will be responsible for arranging meetings and communica-
tions to insure coordination and cross-fertilization between (1) the major
parts of the inquiry, and (2) related groups such as alternative school
staff and students, educational organizations, and investigations in
related projects . (See Appendix C, pages 69-70 .)

39. PROJECT ACTIVITIES AND PLAN OF WORK
We have projected a four-year plan of work and activities . The
overall intention of a multi-year plan, with several distinct investigative
thrusts, is twofold : it will enable subsequent years of investigation to be
informed by the work of prior years ; and it will allow the several major
thrusts of the project to retain investigative autonomy, while at the same
time deepening and enriching one another as the study progresses and cul-
minates in the fourth year -- one of intensive, reflective discussion and
writing . The course of the project moves from a large-scale, extensive
survey of alternative schools - as the primary and already funded activity
of the first year -- to more intensive and convergent quantitative and
qualitative research and service activities for the second and third years .

40. body of writings on alternative
-34-
YEAR ONE
The purpose of Year One is to survey the extent and nature of alterna-
tive education in U .S . schools, and to analyze and summarize a substantial
education, including all published and a
great deal of relevant unpublished research and practitioner-produced ma-
terial . Year One also permits further planning, instrument development,
coordination among the investigators, and site selection for the intensive
studies of Years Two and Three .
Extensive Survey
The purpose of the extensive survey is to provide a comprehensive list
of alternative schools and programs in the United States . The list will
enable more reliable estimates of the size and growth of the universe of
schools than have ever been possible . The questions on the survey ques-
tionnaire will be few in number (perhaps 30), concise, and will elicit
responses of such straightforward information as school size, target popu-
lation, type, and governance -- as well as reports of the philosophical,
psychological, and educational assumptions and environments generally
prevailing within the school . The survey will not only provide valuable
information about alternative education across the nation but will also
serve as the basis for selecting a stratified, random sample of schools for
more intensive study in subsequent years of the project . The stratifica-
tion will include size, region, and type .
We want to take advantage of the opportunity to actually launch our
inquiry in 1981, with this national survey of alternatives already funded
by the National Institute of Education, and the National Education
Association . NF-,k has agreed to collaborate in the survey by handling the
technical aspects for PAE, once we have made further detailed decisions
about the questions to be used, and the respondents to be polled . At that
point, NEA will aid in the finalizing of the survey instrument, distribute
it, and receive and tabulate replies . PAE, however, (namely, Raywid and
Walberg) will retain responsibility for specifying the analysis and
interpretation of results .

41. -3 5 -
We are designing the survey instrument partly in accord with sug-
gestions made at a January, 1981, design meeting ; and partly on the basis
of the schedules used in earlier alternatives surveys (e .g ., by the
National Alternative Schools Program, the National School Boards
Association, the New Schools Exchange, and selected State Education
Departments) ; existing knowledge about those demographic characteristics of
schools, their populations, and communities which appear to be of educa-
tional significance ; and research to date on what appear to be the central
aspects of educational alternatives .
Completion of a first draft of the survey instrument will be the
primary responsibility of the PAE Director ; Walberg will offer technical
advice and consultation . Kerry Homstead, one of the authors of the NASP's
National Directory of Public Alternative Schools, published in 1978 has
agreed to aid in the actual design work, and it is hoped that her experi-
ence will enable us to anticipate and avoid pitfalls involved in earlier
surveys . To this purpose, we will also consult in the early stages of our
preparation with Jim Necklenburger who directed the National School Boards
Association survey reported in 1976 .
We will arrive at the most comprehensive survey list of alternative
schools ever undertaken . Contacts across the country will be of signifi-
cant help in assembling the list, and we will work in various ways in
compiling it . For instance, we have just been informed of a newly com-
pleted list of all public school alternatives in the State of Washington --
which will reduce our task considerably in relation to that particular
area . In some areas, State Education Departments may be helpful, in
others, different contacts will be indicated . NEA has offered assistance
with this location-identification problem, and, other participant sponsors
-- especially the National Association of Secondary School Principals --
will be in a position to assist, along with NIE and other government
agencies .
Public alternative schools have been estimated at 10,000 . Since we
are pursuing the frequent practice of restricting the "alternatives" label
to schools of choice (as distinct from assignment), then the total might
run about 9,000 . With the elimination of elementary schools, the eventual
universe is likely to be 7,000 . It is impossible, however, to estimate
survey size until the search and selection procedures are completed .
It

42. seems likely that we can survey all schools and programs within the
universe selected ; but a rigorous randomized sample may be necessary . NEA
has committed itself to distributing a minimum of 3500 surveys and to a
maximum expense figure of $10,000 . PAE will assume costs in excess of
$10,000 occasioned by increasing the number of respondents .
Content Analysis
As mentioned earlier, PAE has accumulated in excess of 600 published
and unpublished writings on alternative education . This corpus of material
may be the largest of its kind in the nation, and parts of it served as the
material for a project-completed 200-page review of the literature as well
as a 100-page philosophical analysis of themes that appear in alternative
schools and in the documents they have generated .
This collection of documents will also be subjected to a thorough
content analysis along the lines of John bollard's Criteria for a Life
History, Gordon Allport's The Use of Personal Documents in Psychological
Science, and Louis Gottschalk's The Use of Personal Documents in History,
Anthropology, and Sociology . However, following the Walberg-Thomas pro-
cedures for analvzing "open education" (concerning elementary, mainly
infant and primary schools), the unit of analysis will be documents
describing schools, classes, and human relations within them rather than
individuals (further discussed below) .
To supplement Raywid's philosophical analysis of nine constructs of
alternative education, Walberg will write a 'psychological review of con-
ceptual and empirical research in education and other social settings on
the central concept of the effect of social and personal choices among
alternatives and their effects on psychological
and outcomes . In addition to previous writings
these and related topics, Janice
Helplessness :
work shows
-3 6 -
Theory and Application will be useful . This
that in a wide diversity of environments,
passivity, depression, motivational deficits, anxiety, and
Garber and
environments, processes,
by Walberg and others on
Martin Seligman's Human
broadly based
helplessness,
boredom often
result when humans of various ages are denied at least partial control of
their activities and circumstances .

43. -3 7-
Each of the writings in the collection will be analyzed to determine
the degree_ to which the philosophical and psychological constructs are
represented and emphasized . A smaller sample will be done twice to gauge
the inter-coder reliability . The analysis is meant to take seriously those
thinkers and alternative school practitioners who have taken time to put
sometimes nearly ineffable ideas on paper . The salience of the features
will be assessed across the writings from earlier and later periods, dif-
ferent parts of the country, different types of schools, and insiders and
outsiders . Factor analyses will be employed to characterize the clustering
of the constructs as well as the writings . Themes of these writings will
be incorporated into subsequent survey instruments and into the four major
parts of the project . The analysis will be carried out by Raywid with
technical assistance from Walberg and consultation with the other investi-
gators and school practitioners .
Walberg will also undertake a parallel analysis of the literature
related to the matching of teaching and learning styles . A considerable
corpus of such material has now been developed by two groups, working
almost completely independently of one another : by psychologists whose
work has largely taken the form of aptitude-treatment interaction analysis
(e .g ., Lee Croon_bach, Richard Snow, Penelope Peterson, David Berliner) ; and
by educational practitioners whose efforts have undertaken the matching of
instructional styles and environments to learner needs (e .g . Rita and
Kenneth Dunn, Joseph Hill, Robert Fizzell) . This literature will be
reviewed as grounds for formulating the current study's approach to the
matching possibility .
Meta-Analysis of Previous Research
Science proceeds by accumulation of evidence and replication, in addi-
tion to theory and hypothesis formulation . Although the project is highly
ambitious, it cannot afford to ignore previous empirical research on al-
ternative school environments and outcomes . The 200-page review already
produced by PAE, as well as the discussion of previous findings on effec-
tiveness in an earlier section of this document, are based on about 60
previous research studies (as distinct from the many additional materials
that are non-research based) . An additional task in the first year will be

44. tion, by four independent teams
4
but higher
as well as
results across
scores on
- 3 8-
a careful critical assessment of the research designs, results, and conclu-
sions, using quantitative synthesis methods -- as developed by Gene Glass,
Richard Light, and Robert Rosenthal -- which permit explicit numerical
summary of results obtained by different investigators using different
methodologies .
Meta-analyses of large collections of empirical studies of open educa-
of quantitative reviewers -- Robert
Horowitz of Yale, Penelope Peterson of Wisconsin, Donna Hetzel and Herbert
Walberg of Illinois, and Nate Gage, Ingram 0kin, and Larry Hedges of
Stanford -- are in close agreement that open education on average produces
achievement equal to conventional classes on standard achievement tests,
persistence, creativity, and other cognitive traits,
self-concept enhancement and school satisfaction . Although the
a series of small and miscellaneous studies are not always
significant or perfectly consistent, it appears that more "authentic" open
classes -- those in which, by observation, there is greater teacher-student
joint planning of learning goals, means and evaluation -- produce more
positive results on the latter outcomes .
These results are suggestive for PAE because the concept of alterna-
tive education employed in secondary schools often resembles open education
found mostly in the early grades . For this and other reasons, a meta-
analysis of prior empirical studies of alternative education will be
conducted by Walberg during the first year so that subsequent phases of
inquiry can be built upon previous findings .
Policy Study
The Project's broad purposes call for two fairly distinct kinds of
policy investigation . Both will begin in Year One and will probably need
to continue throughout the inquiry .
Alternative schools are taken within the Project as a route to desir-
able educational change . If the venture is to make the policy impact
intended, then it must concern itself with the policy ramifications of es-
tablishing alternatives and options systems . This calls for a mixture of
analytic and hypothetically-oriented inquiry, examining pro's and con's in
principle, and an assortment of prospective scenarios with respect to the

45. -3 9-
national sociopolitical scene and to public education's future . Thus,
systematic policy inquiry ought to be directed at such logical issues as :
"Alternative Educations vs . the School's Melting Pot Function" ; "State
Mandating of Alternative
Tracking and Elitism" ; hool rnat vs . Vouc e And we
ought also to be exploring such more contextually-oriented questions as :
"Under What Conditions Are Options Systems Likely to Be Widely Adopted?"
"Under What Conditions are Options Systems Practicable within School
Districts?" "What Sociopolitical Conditions Would Render Educational
Alternatives More or Less Desirable Than They Currently Appear?"
A second and quite different kind of policy study must address the
question of educational values . The Project's primary inquiry question --
"'Which alternatives well serve which youngsters, in relation to which
educational values?" -- calls for inquiry into what kinds of alternative
schools and programs respond to which educational preferences and priori-
ties . At the conclusion of the inquiry, we want to be able to say, for
example, "If you are interested in a program that will reflect and culti-
vate skills related to independence, self-reliance, and critical thinking,
then alternatives A, B, and C appear good prospects . If you are inter-
ested, instead, in programs committed to manifesting and stimulating
obedient, responsible, rule-governed behavior, then alternatives D, E, and
F appear better prospects ." To be able to arrive at such claims, we need
to assemble the educational values lists to which alternative schools sub-
scribe . The assembling and ordering of these lists will be the task of the
Policy Study group .
It might be appropriate to conveying the nature of the task involved
to state that it goes considerably beyond the additive compilation of the
goals statements promulgated by schools . Alternative schools are committed
to process values as well as outcome values . And according to some, con-
ventional schools also manifest values not rendered explicit in their goals
statements . (This claim is a prominent feature of many of the studies of
the "Hidden Curriculum.") Thus, any attempt to arrive at a list of educa-
tional values and priorities will need to involve extensive analysis of
alternative school materials, and of the literature of alternative educa-
tion . The Policy Study group will undertake such analysis .
Schools" ; "Alternatives and the Avoidance of
4<

46. -4 0-
Services
This -initial year of the study will largely lay the groundwork for
services to come . We will be doing so in two major ways in connection with
the survey that is to constitute a main thrust of the Year One inquiry.
First, the questionnaire going to all secondary alternative schools in the
country will inquire about interest in being part of project activities and
receiving news and materials from and about other alternatives . A large
affirmative response is anticipated and this will yield our initial mailing
list to alternatives .
A periodic mailing to these schools will begin shortly thereafter .
The mailings will occur with fair frequency (every three to six weeks) .
They will sometimes consist of articles contributed on a volunteer basis,
sometimes on an invitational basis ; sometimes of questions to be tackled by
other readers and by project staff ; sometimes of program reports or de-
scriptions or statements on particular problems . The publication will be
highly flexible in content, then, of varying length (perhaps 1-6 pages) and
will probably be reproduced from typed copy . In addition to general open
invitations to contribute, invitations will be addressed to specific
programs to report on activities of wide prospective interest, as exposed
initially by our survey . There will be few turn-downs of such an invita-
tion . The commitment of those involved in alternative programs is widely
known . Their dedication is such that an opportunity for talking about and
sharing what they do enjoys enormous appeal . Moreover, the periodical here
described can accomplish a number of things of considerable interest and
concern to alternative school people, and treat a number of the problems
that plague them .
The comprehensive survey of alternative schools will also aid in an-
other key way in laying the groundwork for services to come . The survey
will ask respondents to submit a variety of materials with their replies --
school or program descriptions, curriculum plans and accounts of activi-
ties, instructional materials, student work, evaluation instruments and
reports . The cataloging and microfilming of these materials will begin so
that eventually they can be made available to other alternatives seeking
program information .
PAE is already receiving a number of requests for information and
advice from and about alternative schools .
The sort of clearinghouse

47. -4 1 -
functions involved in responding will increase during Year One of the
inquiry and subsequently . The project's reform interests render highly
germane the extension of such services to non-alternatives inquirers also .

48. -4 2 -
YEAR TWO
The intent of the second year is closer, more intensive studies of
alternative schools . The broad survey of the first year will elicit the
more straightforward facts about these schools and their variations . Years
Two and Three will see the more intense study of psychological environ-
ments, social processes and educational activities, and student accomplish-
ments ; the initiation of governance, organization, and finance inquiry at
school and district levels ; ethnographic studies ; investigation of
alternative school graduates ; and the further building of school liaison
and augmenting of service activities .
Intensive Survey
In a random stratified sample from the comprehensive list of approxi-
mately 7,000 schools, 100 will be chosen for moderately intensive survey
investigation using constructs from the writings that PAE has already pro-
duced, the content analysis, the meta-analysis, and the advice of alterna-
tive school people . The sample is likely to be stratified by the following
factors : per-student expenditures, size, type of alternative school (from a
factor analysis), rural-urban-suburban location, and school socio-economic
status and primary ethnicity ; and region of the country . These stratifica-
tion factors are likely selection criteria not only to insure representa-
tiveness of the sample but also to examine their relation to the degree and
type of choices provided and to the quality of student/staff experiences
provided by the schools .
Depending upon school size (as revealed in the first-year survey),
samples of approximately 100 second and third year students and staff from
each school will be given 30-minute questionnaires concerning their school
environment and experience, social and psychological processes in their
education within and outside the school, their perceptions of teaching and
learning activities, and their accomplishments during the past six months .
In addition, released achievement items in language, mathematics, science,
and social studies from the National Assessment of Educational Progress

49. will be used on the questionnaire . To afford the maximum amount of infor-
mation and simultaneously reduce time required of students, a common core
plus differential combinations of a universe of items will be administered
simultaneously . During the 30-minute period, a writing sample on the topic
"What I Think of My School" will be obtained from a randomly-chosen set of
five youngsters .
The questionnaire will be based on the literature review, philo-
sophical and psychological papers, content analysis, meta-analysis, and
panels of alternative school staff and related study questionnaires . In
addition, the qualitative investigators and service workers will be asked
to complete the questionnaires and essay to provide an independent judgment
of the school environment and other characteristics, on the basis of their
field observations and service activities .
The essays and questionnaires will be scored according to the a priori
philosophical, psychological, and practitioner constructs formulated during
the first year . Other themes and constructs that emerge from the essays,
clusterings of the items, qualitative studies, and service activities (dis-
cussed below) will be considered and represented both in the second year
analysis and, more extensively, in the third year instrumentation and
analysis .
The multivariate statistical analyses will serve at least five pur-
poses . They will assess the degree to which hypothesized alternative
school environments, processes, and outcomes are actually found in the
schools ; determine the degree to which these variables reflect such
stratification factors as size, region, governance pattern, and student
characteristics ; determine the degree that the constructs, including psy-
chological environments and processes are associated with student achieve-
ment, morale, and accomplishment ; determine the degree to which the last-
mentioned association applies to different groups of students, for example,
the artistically inclined, dropouts, ethnic groups, and social classes ; and
facilitate further quantitative and qualitative development and refinement
of the questionnaire and methods for the third year . Despite the process
of development in the last point and throughout the course of the project,
the results and findings of the second year <,rill answer with a fair
degree of confidence the central question of PAE and many major related
-43-